The Franco-Austrian laboratory Valneva, which is developing a vaccine against Covid-19, will conduct a new test to ensure its effectiveness and its absence of danger in the elderly, he announced on Wednesday, slightly pushing back its schedule.
"Valneva is launching a complementary phase 3 trial for its vaccine candidate against (the) Covid-19," the group said in a statement.
The laboratory had launched in April its phase 3 trials, intended to prove the real effectiveness of a treatment before a possible marketing, for this vaccine.
It is a deactivated virus vaccine, a more traditional technology than those of the vaccines currently approved in the European Union: Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which are messenger RNA, and AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, which work by viral vector.
Market launch at the end of the year
Until then, Valneva had conducted trials with 4,000 people in the United Kingdom comparing the effectiveness of its vaccine with that of AstraZeneca. But this study does not promise to be sufficiently conclusive since the laboratory is launching a new trial, this time in New Zealand, with 150 people all over 56 years old. It "aims to generate additional safety and immunogenicity data in this age group," says Valneva, without detailing why he is looking for these data in addition.
The group, which had said to count on a launch on the market during the fall, now counts on a deadline in the "fourth quarter". Valneva has already signed a contract with the United Kingdom to deliver this vaccine in the event of a positive test. On the other hand, he interrupted his negotiations with the European Union, while remaining open to country-by-country discussions.
